Just got word about this courtesy of Traditional Frog - sure, I know emulators have been used to play pirated titles, but this reeks of being way too draconian. While emulators have earned a somewhat dubious rep for the above-mentioned reason, Atlus' argument that RPCS3 can be used to play their games for free doesn't hold much water when one can play said games downloaded off the usual venues (whose names I won't obviously mention) on a jailbroken PS3 anyway. Granted, some have somewhat profited from these emulators (which can be indeed legally sketchy), but DMCA takedowns on such projects do cause a chilling effect on those who only intend to emulate a particular system as a hobby and not to profit unfairly from it.

One of my friends was right in a rebuttal he made when we had a chat recently, in that things like emulators can be used for legitimate purposes and the association with piracy is just an unfortunate consequence. With Atlus' logic, perhaps the government should ban the sale of performance auto parts as illegal street racers are using it, right? Furthermore, third-party emulation (and some forms of reverse-engineering) has been deemed legal for as long as no copyrighted code (e.g. BIOS logic, game ROMs) is used. Sony lost in its case against Bleem (at great expense to the latter, sadly; they were forced to close shop due to legal fees) owing to the courts who determined that the PlayStation was reverse-engineered fairly. Also, the problem here is exacerbated by mainstream media casting emulation in an unfairly negative light, due to its apparent association with pirate sites and the relative ease of downloading a ROM over dumping it off a cartridge.

I think Atlus is in the wrong, simply because of the fact emulators themselves are legal for the reasons you mentioned. They seemed to be even more paranoid about privacy than Nintendo usually is.

One way emulators have been used for legit purposes is the Retron5. It seems to be one of those endless Famiclone systems that are in stores, but it's built off a Rockchip processor and runs a custom build of Android. It simply takes the ROMs from cartridges you own and dumps them onto the system for play.

The Retron5 isn't perfect, and there are claims they used RetroArch source code without permission, but it's still being sold to this day. Other than the aforementioned source code controversy, no gaming company has attempted to stop it's sale.

Yeah, I felt Atlus is grasping on straws there for trying to sue the RPCS3 team just because they were able to get Persona 5 to work prior to its western release date.

The lack of an official PC release is what drove people into emulating their titles, and that's their fault mostly. Piracy happens in one way or another, and it's only a consequence for emulator authors to be wrongfully associated with warez as it is easier to load a downloaded ROM image than to dump it yourself. Emulators are only a platform for one to pkay a game, not necessarily a tool to directly facilitate piracy. If a car is used as a getaway vehicle in a heist, should we ban cars altogether?